Thread by @caitoz

Russian Invasion Prognosticators Are Like Cult Leaders Repeatedly Predicting The Apocalypse

"And now we're being told that nobody seriously believed Russia was going to invade on the 16th, and that February 20th is the REAL invasion date."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/russian-inva…

Russian Invasion Prognosticators Are Like Cult Leaders Repeatedly Predicting The Apocalypse (Audio)

"Looking to the mainstream media for truth is like looking to a prostitute for love. That's not what they're there for. That's not their job."
soundcloud.com/going_rogue/ru…

Back in November The Military Times published a Ukrainian intelligence claim, which was picked up and repeated by numerous other mainstream publications, alleging that Russia was going to invade Ukraine by the end of January.
militarytimes.com/flashpoints/20…

...Then in late January when the calendar debunked the Military Times incendiary headline "Russia preparing to attack Ukraine by late January", that same outlet ran a much less viral story with this much less impressive headline:
militarytimes.com/flashpoints/20…

This past Friday the deputy director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/melindaharing/status/1492218334783447041

The weekend came and went, Haring issued a sheepish admission that she got it wrong, then immediately turned around and proclaimed that Putin may strike on Wednesday.

https://twitter.com/melindaharing/status/1493316114784399365

On January 14th we were told by NBC that we could expect a Russian invasion of Ukraine "within a month's time". On February 14th the prediction was as unfulfilled as the wishes of a Jordan Peterson fan on Valentine's day.
cnbc.com/2022/01/14/rus…

Then British outlets The Daily Mirror and The Sun told us that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to come at 1am GMT on Wednesday, citing "American intelligence agencies". This prediction was again debunked by the hands of the clock.

https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1493548392844193793?s=20&t=ZblzfGebLiujJORjhQNvhQ

The Sun's updated article now says this:
thesun.co.uk/news/17655287/…

Last week the US president told US allies that Putin may invade on February 16th, a prediction Ukraine's President Zelensky made fun of in a widely misinterpreted joke. This claim also has been discredited by the clock.
politico.com/newsletters/na…

And now we're being told that nobody seriously believed Russia was going to invade on the 16th, and that February 20th is the REAL invasion date.

https://twitter.com/alexbward/status/1494058265642254344?s=20&t=WU4nAb0g-guOjn-Vjuz9uQ

Radio evangelist Harold Camping famously predicted that the Apocalypse would occur on September 6 1994, September 29 1994, October 2 1994, May 21 2011, and October 21 2011.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Ca…

Whenever he got a prediction wrong he'd just move the date into the future. He was one of many exploitative Christian cult leaders who've falsely predicted the Rapture over the years amassing thousands of followers with an early form of tabloid clickbait.
birthmoviesdeath.com/2011/05/20/a-b…

The difference between the Harold Campings of history and the Ukraine invasion prognosticators of today is that Harold Camping died disgraced and disdained instead of being elevated to lucrative positions in the most influential news media outlets on the planet.

Today's Harold Campings will invent all kinds of justifications for their shameless participation in a transparent government psyop designed to advanced the unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the US hegemon once their war forecasts fail to bear fruit.

https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1493937764110323712?s=20&t=9TJvX3TRDqgwFN2RytSOsw

The most common justification will be to claim that Biden's hawkish posturing is what deterred the forcible annexation of Ukraine into the Russian Federation. As we discussed previously, this claim is logically fallacious, explained here by Lisa Simpson:
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-specious…

We're already seeing this "we stopped the Russian invasion" narrative circulated by unscrupulous pundits like Tom Friedman of the New York Times, whose spectacularly awful career differs from a stopped clock only in that it is wrong two additional times per day.

Putin could very easily do the same thing to the US. Just copy the western script, replacing each instance of "Ukraine" with "Mexico" and each instance of "Crimea" with "Texas".

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1494109598323986435

We're also seeing a new narrative in the oven with claims of a Russian cyberattack against Ukraine, which as an invisible attack whose evidence is classified would serve the imperial face-saving effort, with the added bonus of justifying further economic warfare on Moscow.

The Ukraine invasion that never arrives is showing us once again that when it comes to Russia you really can just completely ignore all the so-called "experts" in the mainstream media. Just dismiss 100% of everything they say. Any random schmoe's best guess is better than theirs.

If you believed these predictions, the correct thing to do as they fail to come true is not to engage in a bunch of mental gymnastics justifying it but to drastically revise the worldview and your media consumption habits which caused you to believe this crap in the first place.